Some of the Ukrainian journalists who reported on brutal massacres or were injured on the frontlines while covering the Russian invasion of their country over the past year have sustained psychological traumas as a result. This post is also available in this language: Shqip Bos/Hrv/Srp It’s been nearly a year since Andriy Tsaplienko, a reporter with the Ukrainian broadcaster 1+1, sustained a leg injury while filming in the city of Chernihiv not long after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Tsaplienko was already an experienced war reporter; for more than two decades he had been covering conflicts in places like Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq and North Macedonia. But the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the seizing of parts of the Donbas region by separatists brought him back to his home country. But for the 54-year-old multi-award-winning journalist, covering a war that was happening at home was different. After he was wounded in March, he had to undergo through three operations and have a prosthetic fitted. “What I realsed, from my own experience, is that any kind of war wounds don’t pass easily without consequences, physically, emotionally,” Tsaplienko told BIRN. “I thought that my trauma wasn’t quite serious. But it was an illusion,” he added, sighing deeply. Tsaplienko is one of the journalists who covered the mass killings of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in the city of Bucha last year. After Russian forces pulled out of the area in April, hundreds of bodies were found, including those of several children; many are believed to have been lined up and executed. “When I went to Bucha and filmed the massacre and atrocities, I didn’t have much time to think. People need to have faster information, literally minute to minute,” he said. His trauma is not only physical but psychological too: “It’s kind of PTSD. Sometimes I go to the clinic and meet soldiers, friends. It’s a kind of common psychotherapy. But again it’s hard. It’s something that kills you inside.” Being separated from his family is something else that causes him stress. “I sent my family to Poland. But my 16-year-old son also had anxiety. He wanted to come here and fight,” he explained.
via balkan insight: A Year of War in Ukraine: Journalists Face Trauma of Reporting Atrocities